Note: There seem to be three overlapping topic streams about leadership so
I'm not so sure what to call this stream because it speaks to all of the
others.
Dutch--
Thank you for responding to my earlier questions.
You wrote:
> No. I did not mean a return to "trait" leadership theory, but I
>also object to the theories of situational leadership because they are
>post-problem-centered, that is they do not address how to or who
>identifies that there is a problem, threat, or challenge to the group,
>organization, or culture. My belief is that it is a cognitive shift on
>the part of an individual to become a leader.
I agree that being a leader involves a major cognitive shift that initially
gets to the heart of taking "ownership" in the direct sense of believing
that one's voice and actions effect all __situations__ . I also believe
that an educator's most challenging job, whether that person works inside
corporations or in the university, is to inspire students or managers to
"believe" that this is true, however difficult and despite how these kinds
of belief systems are always going to be embedded in all kinds of power
conflicts at every turn. Why? As Karl Weick points out, "Believing is
seeing"--not the other way around.
As for 'situational leadership', --if we can move away from popularist
books about how that too often has been defined in the past--I don't see
any way to avoid the need for leaders to be dynamically engaged in the art
and the science of perpetually needing to read changing situations all of
the time, given the turbulent territory of today's marketplace.
I think that many people reject notions of situational leadership because
somehow the mistaken notion that 'changing core values' has crept into the
association with changing situations. However, genuine situational
leadership--to me, anyway--implies the highly sophisticated skill of
manifesting consistent core values in a very volatile and dynamic context
that will always be changing because of the nature of open systems and
pluralism. I don't think we have a choice in dealing with changing
situations on a daily basis.
As for addressing 'how to or who identifies that there is a problem,
threat, or challenge to the group,
organization, or culture'--well, this takes us to the __heart__ of why
leadership needs to be a priority objective in all types of corporate and
university-based educational programming. We have left the age of needing
but one mentor or one leader for groups, organizations, and subcultures of
all types.
Those organizations and individuals that can see this and possess the
critical abilities to _learn_, another way of saying they know how to
change whether it is comfortable or not will best be able to compete on new
terrain. Those organizations and individuals who stubbornly cling to old
school (top down Taylorism, for example) won't have to worry about their
__futures__.
I agree that individual cognitive shifts are vitally important, but I think
we also live in a social moment where a larger, more persuasive collective
cognitive shift must now take place on corporate soil. Leadership programs
should understand this as one of their primary goals. Hence, it isn't that
the "behavioral" leadership school creates a need for "situational
leadership" so much as --I think--we find ourselves in a crisis situation
that begs everyone to redefine the situation and to redefine leadership in
greater participatory parameters that, if we are honest about it, were
never part and parcel of how America's captains of industry wanted things
to work.
[Note: A great book about this is Richard Hofstadter's
Anti-Intellectualism in American Life,-- a history about why too often the
academy and industry have been at odds with one another. It won the 1964
Pulitzer Prize in Non-Fiction---and I think this is a good text
recommendation for leadership and/or management programs of all types.]
One last comment: I think that it is very important for academicians and
industry practitioners to dialogue and to work, hand in hand, in this
process of creating leadership programs. The fruits of corporatization, as
all of us know, are not always 'sweet' or socially responsive at any level
of the analysis.
The _system_ works against new visions of leadership in ways that now
challenge our discourse to become more honest. Workers know this.
Managers know this. And, our students know this because they watch the
media reports of our day. Leadership is probably the most important subject
in curriculums, today, across all fields and disciplines. Everyone needs
to be _trained_ as leader because the threats, themselves, are collectively
bound. It is quite challenging.....to say the least. We are all in __the
situation__together, are we not?
Michele Grottola
ABD, Cornell University
Adjunct Instructor, NLU-Chicago
Master's Program in HRM/OD